Against the Looking-glass

A couple months ago, I went through the process of applying for a teaching position with the Japanese government. The first stages of the application were straightforward and left me more or less in control of the impact of my application; I picked each and every word of my cover letter and employed careful phrasing, indentation, and even font choice on my résumé, carefully crafting an image of responsibility, creativity, and experience; my references were briefed with specific talking points distinct to each of them which, when read in the context of the others' letters, would create a balanced, enticing image. The application was genuinely a multimedia work of art, conceived with of coherent artistic agenda and executed with, I believe, considerable skill.

I lost control with the next stage: submit two passport-sized photos (2 x 2 inches). Left ear must be showing. Applicant should be photographed wearing business attire. Detach reply form from this letter at dotted line. Affix here using glue. Do not smile.

I'm still not entirely sure why that demanding little letter, with its series of staccato strictures, was so jarring, but I think Woolf may be on to something at the end of the Between the Acts, when the players turn the mirrors on the audience, to much consternation:

The hands of the clock had stopped at the present moment. It was now. Ourselves.

So that was her little game! To show us up, as we are, here and how. All shifted, preened, minced; hands were raised, legs shifted.

The audience is “laughed at by looking glasses” amid grumblings that the gaze of the mirrors is “distorting and upsetting and unfair”. The distortion is of their self-images, and the unfairness results when they are stripped of these images. The audience and I shared a similar dismay at having all of our calculated facades, the little projections and mythologies we exhibit, shorn away in the face of the determined Gaze.

You cannot argue with a mirror any more than you can with a camera.

Woolf's audience had only to see themselves, but my ill-shaven, sleep deprived, unkempt mug traced a circuitous route from the phototech at CVS's discerning gaze to the halls of the various ministries of the Japanese government, at one of which it remains today, enshrined in a manilla folder with the comments of some bored civil servant scrawled around it. There, prodded at, judged, evaluated, analyzed, and, ultimately, rejected, this utterly truthful, horrifying image, complemented by a series of little black squiggles, arranged in an oval shape and called my fingerprints, was left to plead my case.

In that moment, I became a member of that audience, offended and dejected that the story should end with nothing but the truth about myself.

Mrs. Dalloway: British Connexion

I grew up in a Disney world where age and wisdom increase proportionally. So it is a little weird for me to watch more mature people act so fastidious and puerile. Therefore, you can imagine how difficult it was to try to analyze the characters and the motives for their actions in the 1997 movie Mrs. Dalloway. While much of the movie stays true to the novel by Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway and her circle of friends seem slightly senile with all the smiles, stares, and repetition of “look.”

Yet, as I warmed up to the characters and saw them in different frames of their lives, I began to sympathize with them. There seems to be such an abundance of misery and pain in this world that Mrs. Dalloway, Hugh, Peter, Richard, and Lady Bruton choose to focus on the superficial and less upsetting. Mrs. Dalloway veers around the awkward emotions creeping up on her since Peter has re-emerged into her life. She does not want to worry but knows that they have left things unresolved and unhappy. Will he be the same Peter who I once knew? Will he remember me? Us? Is life happy without me? These are questions that are perceptibly considered during the movie. The questions boil down to the significance of existence and how it shows in the lives of other people. Clarissa, nevertheless, shies away from such depth and introspective thoughts throughout the movie to utter “You won’t forget about my party! You’re coming to my party?” (except throw a British accent on it to pronounce pa-aw-ty).

Nonetheless, Septimus bears much of the depth in the movie, as well as in the novel for me. He is not afraid of introspection but suffers from it. He appears to be encumbered by every other character’s inability to deal with such deep thoughts, pains, and suffering. He endures enough suffering for all of them. When Mrs. Dalloway worries about her party or Peter about why Clarissa doesn’t like him or Lady Bruton about her new and brilliant cause or Hugh about stately appearance or Richard about…about…nothing really, Septimus is on the edge of such trivialities. He constantly hears a cacophony of sounds triggered by one “clamorous sound." He says "all the world is clamoring" and notices that he is finding it insufferably difficult to continue to be in such pervading anguish. He seems desensitized when he feels the most out of all of the characters. Hugh talks to Clarissa about his indisposed wife and Clarissa seems to feel very little when compared to Septimus’s reaction to Dr. Holmes as a “sneaky hunter.” (Dr. Holmes implies that Septimus is feeling lost or displaced mainly because “Men coming back from war…their work has been commandeered by women” and not because he saw a comrade, Evans, blown up in front of him.)
On the other hand, Septimus sets the tone of the movie and gives reason to why these characters are the way that they are. The movie opens with Italy 1918 and Septimus in the trench calling out to his comrade, Evans, before the comrade’s demise. Soft echoing music with still, detached notes resonates. This event is big. Perhaps, it is too big to live up to or to contemplate. It becomes easier to focus on the little things. Shift in the little things like choice of hat or dress or meaningless parties do not have as great or immediate an impact as actually confronting issues like death, the war, or suicide. Mrs. Dalloway’s patrons can experience momentary satisfaction in her parties and can reserve pensive remembrances of the night for later. Clarissa talks about the significance of a party to “give people one night in which everything feels really enchanted.” The aim of her having a party is to give a spark to life and to advocate appreciation for it. She tries to share this enchantment with her guests. Clarissa is connecting and uniting with people in a world with such solitary thoughts and trivial focus where the characters may fail to understand one another because they do not venture deep enough within themselves and each other to comprehend one another. Clarissa connects with her guests, with Septimus as a participant (not victim because she does not see it that way) of suicide and flower-shop onlooker, and with the woman she sees in the window from her balcony at the close of the movie. The difference between Septimus and Clarissa is that, among other things, Septimus turns away from the person he connects with and sees through the window across from Dr. Holmes’s office. He rejects personal connection while Clarissa seeks it and strives to maintain it.

All in all, Mrs. Dalloway was a bit long for me but accurately portrayed much of the novel, except for the car scene—a big scene to me. The hues used in the movie were beautiful neutrals and pastels that mirrored the level of passion and depth within the world of Mrs. Dalloway (tepid with superficialities). The costumes were nice pieces. The actors portrayed the characters well. Mrs. Dalloway is an interesting movie and an individual who likes to see the novel-to-movie transition should see it.

The Hours: Review

The Hours attempts to connect the stories of three women that are all connected by Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The movie is interesting in that it is very Woolf-ian and connects all three of the characters that are disconnected by time, much like Woolf connects the characters within Mrs. Dalloway without ever having them meet. Likewise, it also spans only one day in each of the characters’ lives (the exception being that Woolf is shown at the end of her life as well) with each having some sort of party event looming on the horizon.

All three actresses play the parts very well, though I’m surprised Nicole Kidman got an Academy Award for her performance. Although good, it was not anything amazing. More so, Julianne Moore is perhaps the most dynamic of the three, playing Laura Brown who probably is the most delineated from the plot of Mrs. Dalloway. Rather, she is seen reading the book throughout and how it inspires her. Although not directly from Mrs. Dalloway, the character seems to have elements from other Woolf novels: the relationship between her and her son seems to have a touch of Mrs. Ramsay from To the Lighthouse and her inability to make a cake mirrors Rhoda’s trouble in The Waves to comprehend numbers.

Were it not for the middle story, the third story would have hardly any meaning. All the events eerily parallel Mrs. Dalloway and even most of the characters retain the names from the novel. Clarissa is trying to throw a party. Richard and Sally are switched as Sally is now in the long-term relationship with Clarissa, but there are obvious clues that Richard and Clarissa had a history. There is a daughter who comes home and a Peter character. What makes the novel so great is the relationship of these stories to the Septimus storyline. Instead, it is Richard who falls out the window (could see that one coming from a mile away) and AIDS is the substitute for shell shock.

It’s sort of comic that the characters know of Woolf’s novel, as it is even mentioned throughout, but do not realize they are carrying out situations and fates that are within the novel. The movie, however, looks great and the cinematography is very much inspired by Woolf, as it pays attention to details within the days of the characters, much as Woolf’s novel does. Phillip Glass’s wonderful music is probably what keeps the stories together. If you have never read Woolf’s novel, the story will probably be much more fascinating, but having read them and knowing how much deeper Mrs. Dalloway is, the movie does not reach to the same level as the novel.

The Courage to Live; A Review Mrs. Dalloway

Every moment of everyday is filled with choices; the choice to dream, the choice to love, and the choice to live. Of the thousands of choices we make in a day, some we realize will effectually change our lives for ever, while with others, there can be know way of knowing their eventual influence, unless, of course, we consider them in hindsight.

Perhaps that’s why Clarissa Dalloway thinks that is so “dangerous to live for just one a day.” Everyday requires the courage to live with the choices we have made, while simultaneously making new ones.

Mrs. Dalloway, a film directed by Marleen Doris, stays true to that theme. We follow Mrs. Dalloway, played by Vanessa Redgrave (who looks curiously like Virginia Woolf in her physical appearance), during and after she makes the choice of a lifetime to marry the more “safe” and predictable Richard “Dalloway, it’s still Dalloway,” over the brash, young, and pocket-knife-fondling, Peter Walsh.

We also follow Septimus Smith (Rupert Graves). Septimus’ story makes evident that many choices are made for us. The death of his friend Evans, for instance, by a wartime blast was cruel and sudden. Overcome with grief and despair, Septimus cannot use human reason to categorize his friend’s death. The doctors, in turn, can’t seem to categorize Septimus and vow, instead, to “take him away.” Yet Septimus believes that the mark of his own sanity is the choice to go on living as he like and if he can no longer do that, then he chooses to die rather than be “in their power.” It is the audacity of Septimus’ choice as well as the one she made that summer in Borden which eventually posses Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts to the point in which she is compelled to reflect on them: “That young man killed himself, but I don’t pity him. I’m somehow glad he could do it- throw it away. It’s made me feel the beauty. Somehow feel very like him- less afraid.” The simple fact that Septimus made a choice is what is so attractive to Mrs. Dalloway, it recalls in her a time of youth and promise. It makes her realize how much life and promise is still left for her to live.

This is not an easy film to produce, for the obvious fact that it is novel based on first-person narration, which take place in the narrator’s own mind. At times I thought the insert of thoughts by Clarissa were rather forced and intrusive and disrupted the flow of the film, but Vanessa Redgrave's performance is so subtle and gracious, it is hard not to be enchanted by her. I was especially moved by the last scene. After Mrs. Dalloway asks herself: “What makes us go on?” She returns to the party. There she joins Peter, Richard and Sally in a dance. After the years of separation, loss, and defeats small and large, they still find comfort in one another, fun and even laughter. What makes us go on? It is moments like these, among friends and family, who, despite all our choices and whether they were for good or ill, can still gather together to celebrate one another and to celebrate life.

Soliloquy

Like some of you, I got caught in a thunderstorm after last Friday's class. My copy of The Waves, which was swam inside my purse, took quite a beating; the book dried into a wave shape with corners watercolored with the periwinkle from the cover. I admit that I rather like it when design of an object reflects its function or content but the rain distorted some of my markings present inside. The rain especially targeted the last page of Bernard's soliloquy since the traces of words written in my light blue V5 pilot dispersed into blossoming water marks. I can't decipher what I originally wrote, which is rather appropriate since I find the the concluding section an especially perplexing component of The Waves.

I could argue that Bernard's soliloquy is Woolf's version of bildungsroman for the lost male who finally achieves his destined role as a patriarch. After all, Bernard takes over as the sole voice of the concluding section. While the other voices distinguish themselves against others, Bernard is most capable of self-reflection and defining himself without necessarily comparing himself to the others.

Yet, I referenced to the "self" three times within the last sentence and it is precisely this issue of "the self", self-identity and being that is such a struggle for Bernard: "Let me cast and throw away this veil of being." (p. 218) For a character who has just taken over as the dominant being in the concluding section of work, Bernard seems more concerned with abandoning his self-identity rather than relishing in his maturation into a complete individual. Though he is appointed as the one to reflect upon the others and to stand as an individual at the moment that the sun sets over the waves, Bernard's reflection is a cumulation of experiences bound into the story of one life. Then the waves break on the shore and Bernard's being disappears.

The last line of The Waves could indicate death. It could also indicate a complete transcendence into a realm outside of the confines of semantics and linguistic structures. Woolf is a keen observer of relationships amongst people or, rather, the lack of boundaries between beings. Like the thread that extends between the characters of Mrs. Dalloway, the waves rock the beings within The Waves and unite them. However, Woolf achieves such fluidity in her prose that the beings lose their distinctive shapes until they are entirely freed from the confines of "identity" and "the self."

Just like the waves that dispersed Bernard's identity at the conclusion of Woolf's novel, the rain unbound my presence from the fibers of the book's pages.

The Hours; A Review

The drama of The Hours is thus: Woolf is writing Mrs. Dalloway, Sarah Brown--preggers--is reading Mrs. D in 1950's U.S. suburbia, and Clarissa Vaughn is unknowingly living Mrs. D in 2001 New York. The film begins with Woolf standing in a river and ends with her drowning herself in a river. Each plot is a day in the life of a woman. Sarah Brown bakes a birthday cake for her husband and questions her life. Clarissa prepares for a party and painfully reminisces with old friends. Woolf has a visit with her sister and tries to escape her small town life. There are surprises and twists. And of course, 3 lesbian kisses, evenly distributed.

This is the umpteenth time I've seen The Hours. I honestly thought the first time I saw it would be the last. It seemed like Michael Cunningham, author of the novel The Hours, was just working out his mommy issues and his obsession with Mrs. D. But then I thought, "There is totally something up with Richard's robe." I watched it again. "OMG his robe matches"--SPOILER ALERT--"his childhood bed sheets!" The second time I watched it, I became obsessed. I noticed the blue and yellow color scheme, how Clarissa and Richard's dad point at Richard in just the same way, and how familiar that woman in the flower shop looked (Eileen Atkins who played Virginia Woolf in "A Room of One's Own" and wrote the screen play for "Mrs. Dalloway"). I love connections and The Hours is full of them. I also love Philip Glass, the composer for the film.

Reading Mrs. D only fed the obsession. I looked for connections with the book. Obviously, there were many. Furthermore, I felt that the pacing of the film and the weaving together the present with the past were wonderfully Woolfian. But what, then, does the film have to offer? It celebrates life. So does Mrs. D. It explores the ambiguity of sexuality. So does Mrs. D. It plays out the legacy of a masterpiece. So does--just read Mrs. D. The Hours, being based on a novel that was inspired by a novel, has a manifold challenge: it must contribut something that its predecessors do not. Perhaps, in that sense, the film fails.

The Hours has this going for it; it's a movie and a beautiful one. Mrs. D is not accessible to all people and The Hours provides a lovely treatment of the themes explored by Woolf. So if you can't read Mrs. D, watch The Hours. Woolf's characters are so elaborate and real that any reinterpretation of them will be interesting. Cunningham has a wonderful imagination and Stephen Daldry, director, knows how to make a film. My reaction comes from someone who's studied the film and Mrs. D many times. If you asked me years ago, in my youth, I'd say that the film was quite moving.

As Good As It Gets

It was with trepidation that I started watching The Hours. I had just finished the book and had heard, for years, about how good the movie was from my best friend and my sister, who had never actually read The Hours. But I picked up the book earlier this year--it was on sale at B&N--and I loved it. It served as a re-introduction to Woolf for me (I had read some of Mrs. Dalloway when I was thirteen, but didn't really like it), and I suppose this may be blasphemous, but The Hours made me pick up and finish Mrs. Dalloway.

The Hours follows the entwined lives of three women: a modern-day Clarissa Dalloway, a housewife reading Clarissa Dalloway in post-World-War II suburbia, and finally, Clarissa Dalloway's creator herself, Virginia Woolf.

Michael Cunningham's Pulitizer-Prize-winning novel is better than its movie adaptation--but the movie itself is about as good as movie adaptations get. Stephen Daldry has remained true to the source material and I doubt that fans of the novel will be disappointed. It is well-shot, well-written, well-scored, well-lit, well-designed, well-acted; all in all, a heart-breaker of a film, from start to finish.

Meryl Streep is luminous (but isn’t she always? What can’t that woman do, seriously?) and I feel like she really gets the essence of Clarissa, both Dalloway and Vaughn down…she flits from scene to scene like a butterfly, and yet when she breaks down, she breaks down. She gets the lightness and quiet despair of the novel better than either Moore or Kidman.

Julianne Moore is gorgeous (but isn’t she always?) and she pulls off the fragile, extremely depressed Laura Brown well. I was slightly terrified watching her, because throughout the majority of the film, she truly conveys the sense that she is a woman on the verge of collapse; that at any given moment, she could shatter into a million little pieces, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t be able to put her together again.

Nicole Kidman tries. She tries really hard (for Nicole Kidman), and while I don’t think she completely succeeds, I think she went farther than where she usually goes, and I think that is why the Academy gave her Best Actress. Kidman gives a good performance; it just happens to be a performance that is somewhat stereotypical. She gets the very British dryness of Woolf down, but can’t grasp the passion and feeling of Woolf, not even in the train station scene. Still, Nicole Kidman tries and her effort is worth watching.

The supporting cast is very solid; surprisingly Claire Danes did not annoy me (I usually can’t stand her), and Ed Harris as Richard was also terrifying to watch, because he was so clearly on the edge and half-way gone. It is the boy Richard, played by Jack Rovello, though, who is astounding.

The look of the film is gorgeous--the lighting is superb and the color palette seems muted but is pleasing to the eye. The most visually stunning scene is unfortunately already given away in the trailer--Julianne Moore lying on a bed, river water rushing up to engulf her--but it is still great to watch. Philip Glass's soundtrack is haunting, and like other reviewers said before me, it ties the three narratives neatly together.

I want to say that overall, the film adaptation of The Hours was delicate--and I am well aware of the negative feminist connotation of the word--and yet it was delicate. It was delicate but razor-edged all at once, as its original source material is.

For a movie which deals so heavily with depression and suicide, it isn't a depressing experience--it is extraordinarily sad and poignant, but it is also clear-cut and truthful--The Hours, like Mrs. Dalloway, shows life, in all its fragility, in all its heartache, in all its light, in all its darkness, and in all its beauty.

Ahead of Her Hour

Virginia Woolf recognized the importance of having a voice in one's own development, even if others challenge, disrespect or disagree with that voice, and apparently, whether or not that voice was at its most sane. "The Hours" is an applaudable performance, in that it successfully magnified that key interest of Virginia's. I take a departure from my peers' reviews when I say, that I feel the character of Laura Brown is a very true representation of a Woolfian character, and she really possesses a shared quality so often displayed in many of Woolf's novel characters: the need to self-assert because we can and therefore, we should.  

What means a good film doesn't mean having virtuous characters. Nicole Kidman's Woolf mirrored the real Virginia Woolf in that she speaks to a greater cause, human dignity. You need to assert yourself against those who try to stifle or belittle the value you see in the choices you wish to make for yourself. When Leonard first confronts Kidman's Woolf and dismisses her plea to return to London, she says, "They [the doctors] don't speak for my interests [...] this is my right, the right of every human being."  Leonard moved the press outside of London for the sake of Virginia's health, and now she wishes to relocate despite that gesture. This scene is the vindication of  "I will get the flowers myself" or "I will bake a cake," because here we finally have a purely verbal form of self-assertion. Perhaps the most controversial and paradoxical representation of self-assertion in the film is suicide: the ultimate consequence of living the life you wish for yourself, may mean for you, the ending of that life. 

Laura Brown continues this circular thought when she ponders, "What does it mean to regret when you have no choice?" At the end of the film, Brown brings us to the root of self-interest by examining it, proving that self-assertion often serves under the guise of selfishness, and that may be ugly and you may not like it, but it must be accepted for what it is because it is human. In essence, you may not have been able to live with the kind of choices I've made, but it is because of those choices I have been able to live with myself. Laura Brown choose not to live with false comforts, as Clarissa Vaughn has been doing. 

In response to the melodrama that Brown brings to the film. I think filming Laura Brown as melodramatic is very true to Woolf's own approach to her characters: the internal drama that exists in all of us and that she wrote so uncannily. Very often, Woolf will have her characters leave us off with those one-liners, only to return to that character and never address that suspenseful thought again. 

*While I was watching Kidman pace in the train station scene, there was something very familiar about her wardrobe, and I realized Burberry's SP09 line suggested some of that depression chic.

"There Was A Guy..."

I was having beers with a few of my buddies at a table in the corner of a towny bar last July, as we commiserated about how our jobs prevented us from doing that sort of thing more often, when I first heard a strangely compelling alternative rock song come soaring out of the jukebox: "This monkey's gone to heaven, this monkey's gone to heaven..." I turned to my friend Mike, who had put the song on, and asked who the band was.  "It's the Pixies, man," he said.  A few days later, I went out and bought the album Doolittle, and it remained in heavy rotation in my car for the rest of the summer.  

I mention this because I have a similar feeling about that song as I do about The Waves.  The lyrics of "Monkey Gone to Heaven" appear enigmatic at first, just a series of images: "There was a guy/An underwater guy who controlled the sea/Got killed by ten millions pounds of sludge from New York and New Jersey."  Now, it may seem obvious that Frank Black is writing about the environment here, yet it is the way he put it ("an underwater guy...got killed by...sludge") that caused the meaning to elude me for a long time; it was the simplicity of it that stifled my analysis.  It's the same way that The Waves continues to cause problems for me in my reading.  Here's Rhoda's take on the dinner party in Percival's honor:

Strangers keep on coming, people we shall never see again, people who brush us disagreeably with their familiarity, their indifference, and the sense of a world continuing without us.  We cannot sink down, we cannot forget our faces.  Even I who have no face, who make no difference when I come in (Susan and Jinny change bodies and faces), flutter unattached, without anchorage anywhere, unconsolidated, incapable of composing any blankness or continuity or wall against which these bodies move.  It is because of Neville and his misery.  The sharp breath of his misery scatters my being.  Nothing can settle; nothing can subside.  (88)

I think that there are several ways to approach this passage.  We have no need to go to the dictionary for any of the words, and the sentences, though lengthy, are constructed plainly.  We can look at the broad scope: Woolf is trying to convey the awkward discomfort or even melancholy that first arises in a mixed social setting, being forced to put on a congenial face and interact with people amiably, even though all parties know that they are merely exchanging formalities.  It isn't hard to pick up on this aspect of the reading.  Yet, when we examine each of the clauses on their own, Rhoda's emotion becomes abstract and indefinable: "Even I who have no face, who make no difference when I come in (Susan and Jinny change bodies and faces), flutter unattached, without anchorage anywhere..."  Here, there are only glimpses of finite, understandable language; we know that Rhoda feels removed from Susan and Jinny, both of whom she perceives to be well adjusted: they "change" their appearances at the party to fit the setting.  But the first clause, "Even I who have no face" can, to me, go one of two ways.  Either Rhoda feels that she does not have the "face" suitable for a party, meaning she cannot feign enthusiasm among acquaintances, or she may mean that she feels diminished, faceless in the sense that she is overlooked, unrecognized.  "Nothing can settle; nothing can subside," seems (and I believe that I can only say "seems") to reflect her restlessness, her discomfort in this environment.

It is not in spite of these complexities, but because of these complexities, that this passage (and indeed, much of the book) is bizarrely tangible.  Woolf isn't writing literal events, she is contemplating emotions (the same way, I think, James Ramsay had the urge to stab his father, but didn't).  I think back to that night at the bar now that I consider where Rhoda is coming from.  There were certainly moments when shooting the bull about our jobs, or the summer Olympics, or about the Mets' bullpen, or retelling stories from our past would dry up.  And, though friends, we'd each sip our beers or adjust our caps or chuckle uncomfortably.  Although Rhoda's speech is ambiguous and complex, it is perhaps one of the best attempts in prose that I have read which seeks to defamiliarize something as common as a social setting, and truly flesh out the initial feeling of discomfort that many of us understand but have never tried to define in such precise terms.

It seems that I find strange parallels in my life sometimes.  Last semester, my roommate, an avid hip-hop fan, said, "Dude, I have no clue what this song is about, but it sounds sweet."  On Saturday, he came into my room and said, "Dude, you're still reading that?"  Thus, I relate the Pixies' song to Woolf's book because both are stupefyingly simple, yet rich and puzzling; every time I listen to that song, or read the same passage of The Waves over again, I notice something I hadn't the time before.  The same way that the riff of "Monkey Gone to Heaven" is a straightforward E-Fsharp-A-D, Woolf's diction is direct and elementary.  Yet, the simplicity of each impeded my understanding of them.  It's been a painstaking trudge through The Waves for me, but not because I can't read it.  Beneath the simplicity of the language, it takes care on the reader's part to decipher the intricate emotions that Woolf is handling. 

"All the world's a stage..."

“Although it was so brilliantly fine–the blue sky powdered with gold and great spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardins Publiques–Miss Brill was glad that she had decided on her fur. The air was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, and now and again a leaf came drifting–from nowhere, from the sky”

How exquisitely Woolfian of Katherine Mansfield to begin her short-story, “Miss Brill,” by not only comparing the air to a crisp, bright drink but by introducing her heroine by her marital status and intention – a la Mrs. Dalloway. Or, as “Miss Brill” was published in 1920, perhaps Woolf was the mime, choosing to begin “Street Haunting” and Mrs. Dalloway in these veins. As woman modernists, outward shows of friendly camaraderie and private rivalry aside, Woolf and Mansfield are both interested in a similar quandary. Both attempt, through the crises of Mrs. Dalloway and Miss Brill, to illustrate isolation. Through the liveliness of a meticulously plotted party and the buzz that comes with the inauguration of the Season, both writers examine the malaise that accompanies the realization of remoteness.

Miss Brill, exhilarated by the quickening pulse of the public gardens at the start of the French Season, dons her beloved impish fur and perches on her usual bench to observe and comment on the passers-by. Like my Aunt Marian, who enjoys nothing more than keeping a quiet commentary of those who parade down the beach in various states of dishabille (Oh, Di! Take a look at this one!), Miss Brill quietly passes judgment on the strangers who move around her. A lonely woman at her core, Miss Brill establishes false relationships: her fur, her pupils, her geriatric. She fantasizes that her class would be interested in her Sunday tradition and that the old man she reads the newspaper to is dazzled by Miss Brill, the secret weekend actress. While she sits imagining these amicable relations, Miss Brill, stationary in both her pose and existence, casts a discerning eye on the strangers who pass her by. “How she loved sitting here, watching it all! It was like a play. It was exactly like a play.” Suddenly, Miss Brill’s Sunday is a matinee and she quickly reasons that she herself plays a part. She is an actress, and part of a cast. She belongs. The band nearly brings her to tears as she imagines they are part of an ensemble whose upwelling notes will lead to a song-and-dance number.

Poor Miss Brill. No sooner has she concocted a delusion of unity and connectedness than it is devastated by her hero and heroine whose conversation she can hear. The lovers turn the tables on Miss Brill. Now, the critic meets criticism. In mocking tones, they scoff at her pathetic appearance and her presence among them. Immediately after finding solidarity with the strollers in the gardens, she is faced with true alienation. Not only is she ignored, but she is scorned by the hero and heroine whose appearance she admired so much.

Mansfield’s Miss Brill, like Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, not only wrestles with her own identity, but moreover, perhaps, with the role her identity plays in the lives of others. Miss Brill, accompanied to the park only by her stuffed fur (“Little rogue!”), grows restless with her silence. She yearns to be acknowledged. She yearns for a part. Unmarried, Miss Brill thinks only about her pupils and the sickly old man. Needless to say, it doesn’t sound like the woman has many friends. When she synthesizes a unified world, a structure which she herself helps to support – a play – she is momentarily fulfilled by her role as actress. After the comforting epiphany, the snide comments of the lovers snap her into reality. Miss Brill is then forced to acknowledge her separateness.

In the same way that Mrs. Dalloway attempts to assert herself as hostess by presiding over a dinner-party congregation, Miss Brill inserts herself into the lives of others. By commenting, she silently assumes a role and wields a quiet power. Similarly, Clarissa attempts to solve her issues with her own atomization and privacy, by hosting a party. Clarissa’s dinner party, for her, becomes a sort of play. She carefully assembles the players and designs the set. She buys the flowers and mends her costume. She constructs communication and connection. When the party comes into fruition and the curtain goes up, Clarissa is made to cast off her expectations. Septimus’ suicide, like the jarring comments of Miss Brill’s lovers, infiltrates the diorama and Clarissa retreats to resolve, for herself, the problem of alienation. She is forced to acknowledge human alienation in her neighbor's solitary room and she is forced to interpret the death of a stranger.

The Wolf in Woolf

I ask you to once again peer into the lives of George and Martha of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. The film begins with a couple, the couple, exiting from a party. The conversation of the couple is barely audible but appears genial and familiar at a distance. As the couple approaches, the volume is increased and the conversation is heard. Their apparent light and familiar tones are perceptibly exhausted and partially biting. They enter their home and Martha peers around her and her husband’s cluttered home. She says “What a dump!” and invites her husband to find meaning in the exclamation. Well, not quite invite, Martha prods her husband to tell her “What’s that from?” He dismisses the question and we are left like Martha to find meaning in the “dump.” We, or maybe just me, search to find what is so important about the “dump” and seek to find the reflection of an answer in their home. Every inch of their house is covered with something. No surface is completely visible. Even the radiator has a plank or counter over it which serves as a place for their knick-knacks. Every table is crowded with glasses, dishes, laundry, books, and miscellaneous objects. There is baggage everywhere and not just material baggage but emotional baggage too. Martha has daddy issues which add to George’s insecurities as a man, as an academic, and as her husband. Her father is the president of the university and is an invisible yet powerfully present force. Martha uses him as a weapon against her husband and other men. She also uses her father as the model man against which she compares other men, often times the men fall short.

On the other hand, if we dismiss the exclamation “What a dump,” we are like George and choose not to humor Martha in her little antics. We progress to the bedroom where, as Roxie beautifully recaptures in her post, the couple is seen as loving and playful. We see the last glimpse of the loving married couple before they are put to bed and before the entrance of their guests, the new couple. We have heard foreboding utterances and a few snide remarks prior to this bed scene but the new characters that arise from the bed give new energy to their bitterness and viciousness to each other. The couple that we see throughout the majority of the film is this couple. They undertake great pains and care to ridicule each other. Martha and George engage in a night-long game with the new couple, Nick and Honey. Martha and George find new ways to best each other and use the new couple for their gains.

Nevertheless, as dawn looms and the couples have bested each other for the night, the couples retire to their corners to review the night’s games in better light. Martha and George are done with Nick and Honey and the new day is fast approaching so they must leave. Martha and George remain to find comfort in each other and their feats from their mean and spiteful games. They find solace in the sarcastic, yet welcomingly caustic, niche of a home that they have created. With the light of day, Martha and George become the loving couple who was put to bed before the night games commenced. They are more sympathetic to each other. George says “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?” He tries to console Martha with the song she has been singing and enjoying all night. Her response is thought provoking. She says, “I am.” The audience wonders if the Virginia Woolf reference is an actual reference to the literary figure or to the boogeyman (wolf) or to their academic lifestyle.

Considering the reference to Virginia Woolf, one may wonder if the characters of Virginia Woolf are representative of Virginia, Leonard, Vanessa, and Clive(*skim Bell, Quentin. Virginia Woolf: A Biography. USA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1974). Martha could be a character who has similarities toVirginia Woolf. Both are gregarious, sociable, and intelligent women who are not really able to have children. Leonard Woolf was attentive and bowing to Virginia. We know George plays games with Martha and entertains the guests, though he is exhausted. Honey, Nick’s mousey wife, could be an auxiliary character like Vanessa in Virginia's life. Nick could be Clive who thinks that he is more intelligent than he really is and is clandestinely misogynistic in his attempts to profit in life. The relationship between George and Martha or Virginia and Leonard could be an example of an atypical marriage. They do love each other but instead of candy-sweet remarks to one another all the time and children they substitute caustic remarks tied with endearing nicknames and a phantom child.

Still, let us look at the last two possible references of the song before we decide if the literary figure trumps the boogeyman or academic explanation. As Kathleen Kane mentions in her post, the reference may be academically centered. Rather than big bad wolf, the song substitutes Virginia Woolf. The substitution has a similar rhyme, differing in the addition of one syllable. It also maintains the wolf with differently spelled “Woolf” that is apparent to the literarily aware, or academics; therefore, the change and joke hinges on wolf-Woolf which can refer to a menacing animal or to a prominent female literary figure. In this case, if Martha is afraid of Virginia Woolf she could be scared of this hinge, the scary and academic where illusions and reality are restlessly muddled or tested. In the history field the, the historians, like George, create stories of the past and of past historical figures. They take pieces of exhumed fact and couple them with assumptions of how things were. In the field of biology, the biologist creates a past and pieces together the present to the past in cladograms and phylogenies. In the lives of Martha (daughter of the president of the university) and George (a professor in the history department rather than the history department), illusion and truth have no definite boundaries:

Martha- Truth or illusion, George; you don't know the difference.
George- No,but we must carry on as though we did.
Martha- Amen.

The characters get lost in their games, their creations, and their academic lifestyles. They grope through critically acclaimed films, quotes from acclaimed plays, and get lost in their literature. They may even be like the big white rat with beady red eyes that George says is a fitting description for Martha’s father or a description fitting for Honey’s father. They may be smaller rats running the maze of life as Martha’s father or Honey’s father constructs it.

George- You take the trouble to construct a civilization…to build a society based on the principle of…principle…you endeavor to make communicable sense out of natural order, morality out of the unnatural disorder of man’s mind…you bring men to the saddest of all points…to the point where there is something to lose…then all at once, through all the music, through all the sensible sounds of men building, attempting, comes Dies Irae. And what is it? What does the trumpet sound? Up yours.

Could this be a comment on society? Their marriage is not what one expects from a typical marriage. Although they are learned individuals, they are not models of sophistication or civility. From the opening scene, they appear to be civil and genteel but, like Nick who is chastised by Martha for dealing too much in appearances, we must not trust appearances. Things are not that clear cut. Perhaps the significance of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is not that definite either.

Although Edward Albee tries to explain the significance of the title, his explanation seems incomplete:

having beer one night, and I saw Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” scrawled in soap, I suppose, on this mirror. When I started to write the play it cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf means who’s afraid of the big bad wolf…who’s afraid of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather typical university, intellectual joke.(Paris Review interview with Edward Albee http://www.theparisreview.com/media/4350_ALBEE.pdf).

I am left with no definite conclusion, except that the reference is for all of the aforementioned reasons. Despite this befuddlement, I think the film is fantastic. The actors employ an emotionally unstable environment that functions on dysfunction and tantalizingly portrayed raw emotion. The audience feels the chillingly warm embrace of anger, lowered expectations, bitterness, resentment, and discontentment as the characters open their home, secrets, and vulnerabilities to us. Every word is enacted with the utmost feeling, save when George tells Martha to show Honey the euphemism because ironically bathroom or lavatory is too dirty a word to utter. Plus, I've always enjoyed the late 50s to 60s saying "Come off it." Twilight Zone uses a form of it in The Afterhours when characters say "Climb off it, Marsha." It is similar to the line in Albee's play, "Come off it, Martha."
See Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf asap.

Who's Afraid of Bourgeois Monotony?

Like Kristen and Roxie, I too was drawn in by the eerie reverberation of the title Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a film adaptation of a play (which I have not seen) by the same name. Most practically, this is because the characters' repetition of the ghost-possessed-child phrase is the only direct allusion to Woolf in the entire film. As Roxie writes, Nichols focuses more on the philosophical dilemmas with which Woolf challenges us, rather than on references and parallels to specific texts. Nonetheless, the professorial professor George, and his equally cynical and sardonic wife Martha, make for a bizarre version of Clarissa and Richard Dalloway. This violently dysfunctional modern couple presages the postmodern couple of Sam Mendes' American Beauty, in which Kevin Spacey reminds us that some of us are too worn down to even bother with the traditional facade anymore. Indeed, the whole film seems to bring the existential crises that Woolf tackles to the surface, as Nichols infuses the scenes with dark lighting, and the soundtrack with plaintive classical guitar.

George conceals his fears of impotence and castration by confronting others with intellectual mind games. He attempts to assert his superiority with his brain, because he cannot do so with his bank account, or presumably with his sexual prowess, as his wife constantly cuckolds him. As with the absentminded Richard strolling in the park, constructing grumpy neighbor laws against horseplay in his head, George lives so much of his life in his head that it is impossible to believe he has a heart. He even goes as far as to rehearse the precise tone, inflection, and body language with which he will hurt his wife by telling her that their son has died. Similarly, Martha expresses her disappointment with George's relatively small salary so ferociously that one can hear in her tone of voice the yearning of Clarissa Dalloway to be at the top and center of her social circle.

I would like to emphasize one aspect of the film a bit more strongly than my classmates--the role of alcohol. If our actors did not actually imbibe some "Bergen" of their own as part of some pleasantly sacrificial method acting routine, they certainly deserve the Oscars for which the entire credited cast was apparently nominated (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061184/trivia). Liquor serves as the perfect metaphor for the permeation of reality into fiction, and fiction into reality. Our characters spend nearly the entire film in a drunken haze, as the saying has it, to forget their troubles, but instead end up revealing their deepest insecurities, and confronting each other with the harshest truths imaginable. In our attempts to escape reality, we only drive ourselves further into insanity, into illusions, which our nature prevents us from maintaining for very long. The characters make the inevitable re-entry into reality that much more striking and terrible for themselves. We are reminded of Raymond Carver's injunction against drinking and thinking.

As with the children's song of which the film's title is a mini satire, the answer to the question ends up being "We all are." Even as children, we develop Freudian defense mechanisms such as sarcasm to counter the feelings, people, and experiences we find unpleasant. While we are unlikely to encounter any literal claws and fangs in our urban setting, Woolf's modernist dilemma knocks patiently on our door.

[Clever Title]

“And one gathers from this enormous modern literature of confession and self–analysis that to write a work of genius is almost always a feat of prodigious difficulty. Everything is against the likelihood that it will come from the writer’s mind whole and entire. Generally material circumstances are against it. Dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down. Further, accentuating all these difficulties and making them harder to bear is the world’s notorious indifference.” (A Room of One’s Own, 51)

Sometimes I forget that the really great book I’m reading was written by someone who probably had a few bad days. It’s hard for me to imagine that works of literature do not just make themselves appear in perfect form, but that they are created by other people—people who are talented, creative, and patient. It’s seems absurd that someone like Virginia Woolf had to deal with things like writer’s block, or any of those other frustrating interruptions that other not-so-talented, not-always-so-creative, and extremely impatient people like me deal with on a daily basis. That being said, this quote from A Room of One’s Own reminds me that even the greatest novels are not miraculous, neat packages of literary perfection, as they may seem to be. Most likely, Virginia Woolf did not just wake up on a Tuesday morning and say to herself, “I think it would be rather pleasant to write a work of literary genius today. And then perhaps I’ll have tea and do some gardening.” Really, it’s no mystery that writing well is difficult. So, if I’m having this must trouble writing a coherent blog, I can only imagine what someone like Virginia Woolf, or Jane Austen, or William Shakespeare must have felt like when they were writing their masterpieces.
In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf remarks that, “...to write a work of genius is almost always a feat of prodigious difficulty. Everything is against the likelihood that it will come from the writer’s mind whole and entire.” This is a four-hundred word blog that cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be called a work of genius (though perhaps my mother would say otherwise...she’s very encouraging). And even now as I try desperately to finish this assignment in peace, there are interruptions. I have a room of my own, which is a good start according to Woolf. The problem is that in the room of my own, there are also two loud roommates. And a television. And facebook. And I’m pretty sure the “world’s notorious indifference” is just outside my window in the form of a particularly thunderous lawn mower. I’m glad that we read A Room of One’s Own, because Woolf reminded me to appreciate the person behind the writing as an actual human being who struggled with normal, human interruptions. Occasionally I find myself separating the writing from the writer, because like Woolf said, geniuses like Austen and Shakespeare are difficult to find within their work. But they did actually write them. And if I want to call myself an English major, I really shouldn’t forget that.